Fox News guest: “We've got to strike Iran”
Joe Buccino: “To have the kind of effect we want to have, we've got to strike Iran, we've got to strike really the heart of this thing and you know, really that's not an escalatory strike”
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From the January 16, 2024, edition of Fox News' America Reports
JOHN ROBERTS (ANCHOR): America's confrontation with Iran and its proxies is only growing wider and more dangerous despite the Biden administration's repeated warnings to knock it off. Let's bring in retired U.S. Army Colonel Joe Buccino, who is the former CENTCOM spokesperson. So the U.S. has been attacking and trying to degrade the Houthis' capability to fire these missiles and drones, yet it doesn't seem to be having much of a deterrent effect, Joe. What are your thoughts?
JOE BUCCINO (GUEST): It's not having much of an effect. Really the nexus for all this, for the Houthis, for the Shia proxy groups in Iraq and Syria, the nexus for all this is Iran, which is feeding these munitions, these rockets, these drones into the Houthis in Yemen. Really, to have the kind of effect we want to have, we've got to strike Iran, we've got to strike really the heart of this thing and you know, really that's not an escalatory strike. There are targets we can hit in Iran that would really send the kind of message we need to send, John.
ROBERTS: Okay. So in terms of targets that we could hit in Iran, back in the 1980s Ronald Reagan hit some oil platforms that were also being used by the IRGC as observational platforms to direct attacks and other things against oil tankers that were coming down the Persian Gulf. What do you think we could hit in terms of Iranian targets that would not ignite a wider conflict?
BUCCINO: So, the Iranians have IRGC bases in the south that are largely empty most of the time, you could strike those. There are Iranian vessels, Iranian ships in the Arabian Gulf that you could strike, there are also Arabian oil refineries. So you've got a series of targets, and U.S. Central Command has submitted these targets to the Pentagon through the White House and been disapproved many times. But there are a series of targets you could strike that will not ignite a war, but will send a message and will really inflict pain. That's really what you've got to do here, John, you've gotta inflict pain on Iran and get them to back down.